7 April 2005 Edition

Coiste organises anti-criminalisation rally

Former republican prisoners and their families are being asked to come out
in force to support an anti-criminalisation rally in the Europa Hotel in
Belfast.

The rally, organised by Coiste na nIarchimí, is set for the Belfast hotel at
7.30pm next Monday 11 April, and organisers say they want to send out a
message from ex-POWs that the latest attempt by the British Government,
aided and abetted by the Dublin Government, will not work.

According to Dominic Adams of Coiste the rally "will hear from a host of
speakers, some who were involved in campaigns over the years to defend the
rights of POWs, and some former prisoners. We also want to outliine the
positive and constructive input of republican ex-prisoners and activists in
the attempts to build an equal society and a just and lasting peace in
Ireland.

"We want as many ex-POWs and their families to attend the rally as possible
because these current attempts to criminalise us affects not only ourselves
as former POWs but is designed to affect our families, communities, and the
thousands of people who took to the streets to support us when we were
imprisoned."

Adams pointed out that ever since the first civil rights marchers took to
the streets in the late 1960s, first the Unionists in Stormont and then the
British, after direct rule was imposed, have made attempt after attempt to
criminalise the republican struggle.

"As prisoners went into jail they became the main target of the
criminalisation strategy and this obviously lead to the protests in Armagh
and the H Blocks and eventually the hunger strikes.

"The many people who supported the prisoners then are the people we want to
see at the rally next Monday because the present attempts to criminalise
republicanism is directed at the ordinary republican voter as much as it is
directed at the Sinn Féin leadership. So I am calling for a huge turnout and
for people across the North to turn up at the Europa and show the British
that their strategy to criminalise the Irish struggle for justice and
equality will not work".

Speakers at he rally will include Fergus O'Hare, a member of the National
anti-H Block Armagh Committee, and former prisoners Laurence McKeown, Rosie
McCorley and Kathy Stanton. Raymond McCartney will chair the event.